


Make Your Pointe

by ShanaStoryteller



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Author doesn't know anything about ballet, Ballet, Ballet Dancer Edward Elric, Future Fic, M/M, a ballet fic that has very little to do with ballet, and she is very sorry, commitment issues, fun fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 09:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19391422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShanaStoryteller/pseuds/ShanaStoryteller
Summary: Ed doesn't know how he got himself into this situation.And by situation, he means dancing the lead role in a ballet he barely knows.





	Make Your Pointe

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is entirely the fault of [citrusvoid](https://citrusvoid.tumblr.com) who made this [great](https://citrusvoid.tumblr.com/post/183184019658/megalania-prisca-i-only-meant-to-do-one) [art](https://citrusvoid.tumblr.com/post/183185248283/more-dancer-ed-cause-i-love-it-previous) and i had no choice but to make a fic around it
> 
> to everyone who knows anything about ballet and/or giselle: i'm sorry. i'm so sorry. i got everything off of wikipedia and google.

“A broken leg, and with opening night only a few weeks away-”

“If only – Kia could have taken her place before, but now - what are we supposed to do now? The understudy is a wreck. She’s not the right choice for this and she knows it.”

“Who do you think the Roza will choose to replace her?”

“She’s bringing over a girl from her old company, since she’s currently playing the part in Drachma, but she won’t be here for opening weekend. I suppose we could push it back-”

“Do you really think she’d suffer the indignity of having to push back our dates, after they’ve already been announced? Are you crazy?”

Ed breathes in, raising himself up and extending his automail leg far behind him while supporting himself on the toes of his flesh foot. On one hand, he wishes they would shut up and let him concentrate. On the other hand, it’s nice that their gossip is occupying them. He doesn’t feel quite as many questioning stares as he usually does. He’s still getting plenty of strange looks even with whatever’s occupying their attention this morning but he ignores them. He’s used to people looking at him, and it doesn’t matter why, the weight of people’s stares is more than familiar at this stage of his life.

He doesn’t know if it’s because they get distracted by the flash of automail from his shorts and red sleeveless hoodie, or the fact that he dances en pointe, like a girl, because that’s how he was taught. He can dance like a man, knows the moves and the way to hold his body, but – he’s worked hard to get his feet, well, foot, like this, to get his strength like this.

When he lost his leg, he’d accepted he’d never dance again. Not that it had mattered, compared to everything else that he’d lost: his mother a second time, his little brother’s body, his limbs. The ability to dance had been nothing, compared to all that. There was so much back then that had been more important that he’d forgotten the thought almost as soon as he’d had it.

But Winry hadn’t. Most automail is too heavy and awkward, the balance is all wrong, but Winry hadn’t given up. She’d built him model after model, using lighter metals and getting frustrated and mixing her own alloys until she got what she wanted, until it was light enough and strong enough so he could dance, so that he could fight, and there’s something freeing in this, in not bending to the inevitability of his lost limbs. He probably wouldn’t have picked this up again, now, after everything, if he didn’t have a problem.

The problem is tall, dark, handsome, and an asshole.

Well, no, the real problem is that Ed gets frustrated often, and he no longer leads the type of lifestyle that conveniently provides a variety of targets for him to take his frustrations out on. He’s not a kid anymore, not a member of the military anymore, and these days there’s depressingly few options available to him if he doesn’t want to end up in a jail cell. Again. Having to call Al to bail him out was embarrassing enough the first time to last him the rest of his life.

He’s twenty two years old, a respected alchemical genius and consultant, and it’s no longer acceptable for him to go punching his problems into submission. Not that it was ever permissible, really, but it worked, and he got away from it, which is almost the same thing.

This isn’t a problem he can punch away, not unless he wants to be brought up on charges of assaulting a brigadier general. Not that they’d stick, good luck finding a jury to convict him, but Al would get that tight look around his eyes, the one that says he’s worried but trying not to show it, and he doesn’t want that, doesn’t need that.

Fuck, if he and Roy could just destroy a parade ground or two, he thinks it would really help their relationship. Why won’t anyone hit him these days?

It shouldn’t be that hard, he lives in Central now, it’s a big city. But his reputation precedes him, even years after hanging up his signature red coat. There are clubs and betting schemes, places where he could step into a ring and get into a good old fashioned brawl, but they won’t take him anymore. Everyone loses to him, embarrassingly quickly, and that doesn’t make for a good show, and he’s a safe bet so it means nothing. They won’t let him back. Bar brawls are satisfying in a primal sort of way, but end up with him in a jail cell, which, as previously established, he’s trying to avoid.

There’s still the military, of course. It’s not like he’s allowing himself to get out of shape. He spars with Alex twice a week, and he still uses their gym even though he’s been a civilian for the past five years. He’s still there most profitable consultant, and he’s friends with half the upper brass, so it’s not like anyone’s going to stop him. Fuhrer Armstrong says it’s good for morale, which he takes to mean that Olivier thinks it’s funny how bruised all their egos get when he walks and kicks their asses or benches twice as much as the officers without breaking a sweat.

He can goad his brother into a fight a couple of times a week and then he gets to kick Al’s ass, but the thing is, Al’s not really a fighter these days, and he knows it. His body’s strong again, and he’s good at it, better than most. But the thing is that Ed has the muscle memory and experience from four years of getting into life and death battles, and that gives him an edge over Al, who lost all that when he got his body back. His memories of the fights are still there, but his body never really accepts that.

He could run. He’s tried it a few times, but he has to run for hours for it to exhaust him properly, and in Central that gets him a lot of strange looks, when he’s sprinting through side streets for three hours at a time, and in the end he’s tired but just as frustrated, so it doesn’t really do anyone any good.

All of which means Ed’s a hair’s breadth from exploding at any given moment, because his blood is singing in his veins and his skin itches with the desire to do something, something that exhausts him and challenges and feels like it matters, something that’s not writing alchemical equations with his brother until Winry threatens to knock the both of them out with her wrench.

Winry had been the one to suggest he start dancing again.

He started learning young, with Winry, only he stuck with it when she didn’t. She’d always been more interested in tinkering with automail than anything else, but Ed liked it. It was a few hours a week where his mind quieted while Madame Gigi taught him how to hold his arms and raise his legs and how to get strong and faster and better.

Then, when they went to Izumi, she and Sig picked up where they left off. Al learned to, but Ed had a couple years of experience on him, and it showed. Plus, Gigi had taught him and Winry exactly the same, and Izumi does what Gigi had done rather than trying to teach him something new. So Sig taught Al, and Izumi taught Ed, and while Al liked it in a practical sort of way, Ed sometimes thinks that if he didn’t love alchemy so much, maybe he might have loved this.

He’s eighteen when he gives in, buys a pair of shoes, and goes to the local studio.

He usually goes at strange hours, times when it’s technically open but no one’s there but him and a few other weirdos.

But today none of the numbers are making sense and he has Roy’s stupid dark eyes in the back of his mind and the echoes of another fight and that terrible thing he said echoing in his head, and he can’t focus, so he’s here at a reasonable time in the morning, where he’s surrounded by people who are staring at him, and he doesn’t care if it’s because of his automail or because he’s the Fullmetal Alchemist or if he’s actually incredibly bad at this and no one’s thought to tell him, but he hates it.

If they want to stare, he’ll give them something to stare at.

He turns, shifting his body, taking stock that he can do this without actually hurting himself, because it will definitely ruin the drama of it all if he breaks his leg in the middle of it.

Then he twists, spinning with his leg held at a careful angle, and the first fouette catches their attention, but then he keeps going, arms raised in a graceful arc, taking care not to travel on the polished floor. He probably should have done this on his automail foot, but they’re dancers, not mechanics, they won’t appreciate Winry’s craftsmanship or his control, so he does it on his flesh leg, holding himself carefully, controlling the movement of his heavy metal leg so he doesn’t send himself off balance and crashing to the floor.

How many does Swan Lake have? Thirty two is probably a bit ambitious right now, but he’s sorely tempted. He comes to graceful stop, his angry yellow glare probably ruining the effect of his elegantly extended limbs.

They’re all staring at him, but at least now he knows why.

“Wonderful!” a voice cries out with a heavy Drachman accent, accompanied by the sound of enthusiastic clapping. He turns, and blinks at what he’s seeing. She’s Ishvalan, but not dressed like it, her white hair pulled up into a bun and wearing comfortable practice clothes. The accent is also really throwing him. “Who are you? Why did I not know you were in my studio before?”

“Uh,” he says, and cringes away when she grabs his arm, running her fingers over the metal plates and divots.

“Fascinating,” she murmurs, looking up at him. She’s not young, he realizes with her up close now, probably in her fifties. “Where did you learn? What school are you?”

He shrugs, uncomfortable. He clearly hadn’t thought this through. “Oh, you know. Around.”

“Around,” she repeats. “Well, it is no matter. You must audition for our ballet. You will do quite well as our lead, I think. We do need someone for the opening weekend.”

There’s angry muttering around him now, and oh, great, now he’s going to have to find another studio where they won’t try and shank him when he walks through the door. “I’m not - no, thank you, I just do it to clear my head.”

“You are just what I’ve been looking for,” she continues as if she hasn’t heard him, slipping her arms through his, he assumes, so he can’t escape. “Perfect for Giselle, I think.”

“You mean Albrecht?” he clarifies, even though he’s not doing this, so there’s no point. Albrecht is the male lead in the ballet Giselle.

“No,” she says, red eyes raking over him thoughtfully, “Giselle.”

He’s not going to wear a dress. He’s not going to do this at all, actually. He yanks his arm free and takes several steps back, hands raised like that will ward her off. “Look, thank you, it’s very flattering, or whatever. But no.”

“Grandma?” a light voice calls out, “Where are you?”

“In here!” the woman responds, and suddenly the other dancers aren’t staring anymore, tipping their heads down and busying themselves with stretching or outright turning away from the door.

Edward doesn’t understand until a teenage girl walks in, the white hair of her grandmother but pale skin and dark eyes. She looks like a ghost.

She’s dressed in a leotard, her hair up, but she’s stepping too hard, her left leg dragging a bit behind her.

It’s made of metal. Automail, and it’s not bad, it probably is even on the higher end of things, soft curves of the metal and perfect for her height. But there’s good, and then there’s Rockbell automail. Besides that, he can see by the way she stands that it has to be new, that she’s not comfortable with it or used to the weight, sees the way her lips pull down at the corners of her mouth at every unexpected motion sends a jolt of - not pain, exactly, but intense sensation up the port and into her nerves.

He knows the exact moment that she sees him, cataloguing his automail and his shoes, and something flashes across her face almost too quick for him to discern, something jealous and hopeful and just such a deep, overwhelming longing that for a moment he forgets to breathe.

“This is my granddaughter,” the woman says, looking at him with hard eyes, and he gets it now, he knows why she’s doing this, why she cares so much that he can do this. “Kia, this is our Giselle.”

A protest tries to crawl up the back of his throat but doesn’t make it out. Instead he shifts, extending his flesh leg back behind him and reaching out with his automail hand. Her eyes flicker down, and she doesn’t bother to hide her surprise. To her, with her imperfect automail and clumsy control over it, balancing like this must seem impossible. “Edward Elric. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Something that might have once been a smile happens around her mouth, and he’s so screwed. He’s such a sucker for kids, always has been.

He’ll wear the fucking dress, and just not tell a single soul about it.

~

“Three weeks?” he demands while the costumer flutters around taking measurements and wailing about his shoulder to hip ratio. “You’re insane. I can’t even learn the choreography by then.”

He’s lying. He already knows it, but knowing the steps and actually being able to perform them are two different things. If he’s going to get in front of a bunch of strangers in a skirt for some dinky community ballet, at the very least he’d like not to make a complete fool of himself.

Roza hums, looking him up and down. “For the next three weeks, you are mine. You wake up, you come, you practice until you bleed, then for a couple more hours. Then you go home and we do it all again.”

“I’m a contractor,” he snaps, “I have clients, one of which is the fucking military. I just can’t fuck off for three weeks.”

“If you believe you can do your little project and dance too, you can try,” she says generously. “But you must not sacrifice sleep. I need you in top form! You are lucky you are so skilled already. You just need a bit of a polish.”

He groans. He doesn’t have to do this. He can just walk out. He dances for himself, not to perform, especially not in a girl’s role. But then he thinks of Kia, and her defeated dark eyes, and he could just throw her at Winry, get her the type of automail that would let her dance properly again. He could, and he will, but he knows that’s not enough. He needs to be a symbol or something, for this girl he doesn’t even know, and he hates being a symbol, that’s one of the fights he and Roy keep having over and over again for no fucking reason that he can understand.

Actually, he’s going to need a couple of adjustments from Winry if he’s not going to screw himself over by doing this. Which means he’s going to need to tell her what’s going on, since he doesn’t think she’ll be willing to switch out the removable plates for a lighter, aluminum based replacements without a good reason.

If he had more than a couple weeks, he could get himself to the level he’d need to play Giselle without needing any modifications. But he doesn’t, so if he’s going to keep from pulling a muscle like an old man, he needs to make his automail lighter so it doesn’t literally drag him down during his performance.

When he gets home, Winry is tinkering at the table and Al is across from her, up to his eyes in his students’ essays. He doesn’t know why his brother gives them so much homework, it’s like he always forgets that he’s the one that has to read all their clumsy explanations and incorrect equations. “Hey, Winry, can I talk to you for a second?”

“You’ve been doing it our whole lives, don’t see why I’d get lucky and you’d stop now,” she says absently, scowling at a piece of bent metal she plucks out of her mess of wires and gears.

He glances at Al, and maybe he’s too buried in very bad essays to pay attention. “Um, somewhere - just, an automail thing, really quickly.”

“Edward did you break my automail?” she screeches, shoving her work across the table.

Al jumps, startled by the sound of metal clanging together and bits of motor oil flicking across the pages he’s reading. Luckily his students are used to it. “What?”

“No, nothing, it’s fine,” he insists, but of course it does no good, and Winry’s yanking him closer to peer at his limbs, because she’s psychotic. “I just was wondering if you could replace some of the outer plates?”

“Why, what’s wrong with them?” she scowls, running her fingertips over them, looking for any imperfections. As if there are any, she’s the best at what she does.

He sighs. “Nothing, okay. I just - I need them to be lighter.”

Now Al’s pushing aside his papers and getting to his feet, the skin around his eyes and mouth tight. He usually only looks like this when Ed gets his limbs reattached. Or whenever he fails to hide some sort of ache or pain from him, actually.

He doesn’t _care_ that he didn’t get his limbs back. He knows the alchemy to get them, and the price is too high, it’s just all too high. Al has his body back, and it’s fine, it’s good, what more could he ask for besides that, really?

“Is it hurting you?” Al asks, and now Winry is concerned too, the little telltale crease appearing between her eyebrows.

“No!” he insists, stepping back from them. “I just - need them to weigh less. For like, three weeks. That’s it. I’m not hurt or sore, nothing’s gone wrong. I just need to get rid of some of the weight for a little bit.” Maybe he shouldn’t have just said anything. He’s lived for ten years with them like this, he could manage. It would make it all a little harder, but it’s all already hard, so it’s probably not that much of a difference.

Now they both look confused, which is at least easier to endure than their concern. “Why?” Winry asks. “It’s not - I have the parts, I can do it, I won’t even have to detach them. But why?”

He looks between them, and he should have thought of something, some lie, except they know him and they know why he’s lying. “You can’t laugh, and you can’t tell anyone.”

They promise not to tell anyone, but don’t mention anything about laughing, which is the best that he’s going to get.

~

He has a break in between Roza drilling him in the steps, and it’s only nine in morning, but he’s been dancing for four hours already. Roza’s really lucky he’s built up the kind of endurance that makes her inhumane schedule possible. He could probably do this in a phone call, except he can’t, because then they’ll think he’s sick or something and show up at him and Al and Winry’s house, and that should be avoided at all costs.

“He’s in his office,” Riza says when Ed shows up, head bend over a file.

Ed looks towards his door, and it all comes rushing back, so suddenly and completely that it nearly knocks him off balance.

Right. Half the reason he’d been at the studio at a normal time of day is that he was fighting with Roy. All he and Roy ever seem to do is fight anymore, but not in the good way, not how they’ve been fighting for years. It’s quiet and slow and deadly, dozens of not-arguments and almost uttered words that keep piling up on his chest, crushing his breathe from his lungs.

If Roy could stop saying that he loved him, and stop looking so disappointed when Ed doesn’t say it back, that would be – that would help, a lot, is all.

“I need an extension on my projects,” he says, turning to Riza. “Three weeks.”

She looks up, glancing at Roy’s closed door, then back at him. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he repeats, because he hadn’t expected it to be that easy. Well, maybe for another contractor it wouldn’t be, but he’s not just any contractor. “Okay.”

“Is everything alright?” she asks. “Nothing’s wrong with Alphonse?”

Al has been in perfect health for years, but they all still worry. He knows Al gets irritated with it, but it’s a comfort to Ed, actually, that he and Winry aren’t the only ones who care about his brother, who are willing to care for him. Just in case something ever happened to him, Al would have people. “Everything’s fine. Something just came up, is all.”

“Okay,” she repeats, and it feels like they’re saying that word an awful lot. She looks towards Roy’s door, then back at him. “He would want,” she stops herself, peering up into his eyes, and he doesn’t know what she finds, what it is that she’s looking for. Can she see it in his eyes? How terrified and exhausted he is? Fuck, but this would all be so much easier if Ed loved him less, if he hadn’t been half in love with that bastard since he was a dumb teenager. If he could stop being afraid long enough to tell Roy how much and how long he’s loved him. “Have a good day Edward. I hope whatever you’re working on goes well.”

“Thanks,” he says, more heartfelt than her words warrant, but he’s thanking her for more than that, and she knows it.

~

“You are _heartbroken_!” Roza cries, looking at him with a critical eye. The man playing Albrecht’s name is Des, and he’s tall and handsome with dark skin and wide friendly eyes, and he cringes away from Roza’s rage. “Act like it! This man whom you love more than the ocean loves the moon has betrayed you! You are so bereft that it kills you, Giselle!”

Ed rolls his eyes.

“Your traitorous lover is wretched over your dying form, and you are desperate to hold him and to push him away at the same time, because he has hurt you and hurt you and would do so again - and you would let him if it did not kill you,” she finishes.

He’s not laughing anymore. That sounds - familiar.

Des presses two fingers against Ed’s jawline and tilts his head upward so he can look down at them. Fuck, but Des is gorgeous, the exact opposite of Roy in every way, but just as heart stoppingly beautiful. “You are in love, right?”

“No,” he snaps, because in love is gross and gushy and how he’d describe Winry and Al, or Riza and Jean even, but not - not him in Roy.

Des looks at him for a long moment, then says simply, “Yes.”

Okay, well, fine. “So what if I am?”

“Imagine they cheated on you-”

“He would _never_ ,” Ed snaps. Not if he knew what was good for him, Ed would rip off his dick and staple it to his forehead.

“If he lied?” Des tries, instead of pushing.

“That’s - not the same,” he says, because Roy lies to him all the time. Not about anything important, not these days, but he still lies, and he lied so much when they were younger, really theirs is a relationship built on lies, because it’s not like Edward is going to be getting any awards for honestly, not while he was in the military, and certainly not after.

He tells Roy a lot of lies, all the time, and Roy lies to him, and okay, that sounds supremely fucked up, but it’s not that bad. They don’t lie about anything that’s important, he thinks, he hopes. Like he’s lying to Roy about this whole ballet thing. Except not lying, really, because whenever he calls the house he just says he’s busy, and thankfully both Winry and Al have kept their silence, so Roy just thinks he’s really busy with… something. He probably should come up with a lie, now that he’s thinking about it, because soon everyone is going to start getting pushy about what, exactly, he’s doing. Alex had burst into tears when he’d had to cancel their sparring matches, but Alex bursts into tears an awful lot, so he doesn't feel too bad about that.

“If he broke a promise?” Des asks, intent.

That - something in him snaps at the thought of it, of Roy looking into his eyes and saying one thing and then going and doing another, no extenuating circumstances or explanations, just - betrayal.

Because that’s what they have, what they’ve built up across all these years that he holds so dear, that they had before they got together and is the whole reason Ed threw caution to the wind and kissed him in the first place.

Trust.

He _trusts_ Roy in a way he trusts almost no one else, except Al and Winry, and that’s not even a fair comparison because that’s his brother and his best friend, and how can anyone stand up against that? Except Roy does, and even when Ed hates him, he trusts him. If he’d cheated, and then lied about cheating, that would be - bad. If he cheated and told him about it that would still be the end of their relationship, but it wouldn’t break him, break them, he’d still trust him. But - some sort of combination, where it’s not just lies or bad behavior, but a betrayal that cuts down to his bones -

“Yes,” Roza says, something satisfied and gleaming in her eyes. “That, right there, perfect. Hold onto that.”

He doesn’t want to hold onto it, it makes him feel terrible, but he’d never been one to do things halfway, and if thinking of Roy breaking him open is what it takes to dance convincingly as Giselle, well, fine. He’s done worse.

It makes it harder though, when he leaves, to not just turn the other way and walk to Roy’s house instead of his own. He’s exhausted, everything’s sore, and his flesh foot is covered in bruises and sores, not used to this level of abuse. He has to be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and truly, this is going to end up killing him. He’s dancing for ten hours a day, and eight would be a lot, but this is just on the edge of too much for him to bear, which he supposes is how Roza wants it.

So he should absolutely go home, eat something, shower, and crawl into bed. But after spending all day thinking of the different ways Roy could hurt him, he just wants to go to him and hold him close, reassure himself that the Roy of the real world and the cruel one in his mind are not one in the same.

He compromises, stopping at a payphone on the way home and dialing a familiar number. “Roy Mustang,” answers an equally familiar voice.

It’s so pathetic of him, that the sound of Roy’s voice, exhausted and trying to hide it, is enough to make him smile. “Hey.”

There’s a moment of silence, then, “Edward. Are you okay?”

“Just tired,” he says, leaning back against the glass.

“Doing whatever it is that you’re so busy doing,” he says, and there’s a tease and a reprimand in there, right on the surface, but below it is something softer, more vulnerable.

“Relax, it’s not about you,” he says, tucking a smile into the corner of his mouth. “Not everything is about you. I really am just busy. It’ll only be for a couple more weeks.”

More silence, but that’s okay, Edward knows Roy’s silences, he uses them so frequently that Ed’s’s had to learn what they say otherwise he would have driven himself insane. “Are you - we did fight, rather conveniently, right before you suddenly became so busy.”

“A coincidence,” he dismisses, “We fight all the time. If I avoided you every time you pissed me off, we’d never see each other.” He’d avoided him a little bit, when he’d told Riza about needing more time instead of going into his office and sitting on the edge of his desk and smiling down at him, but well, the argument was too fresh then. 

Roy sighs, but it doesn’t sound relieved. “I suppose that’s true. If I try to talk to you about it again, will you get angry with me?”

“I’ll hang up,” he snaps, suddenly regretting his decision to call Roy. Maybe he _should_ start avoiding him. “We’ve talked about this to death, I don’t know what the fuck else there is to say.”

“I love you,” Roy says, and Ed covers the bottom half of the phone, so Roy can’t hear the way his breathing changes. “I love you, and I’m not going to stop loving you, and we can’t just - we can’t just live a secret our whole lives.”

Ed has to swallow twice before he removes his hand to say, “It’s working just fine so far. Besides, everyone always looking at us, talking about us, and - and if you ever want to take Olivier’s spot, you don’t want me dragging you down. We’ve talked about this already.”

“You don’t drag me down, and even if you did - fuck being Fuhrer,” he says with such calm, vicious conviction that Ed feels a chill go down his spine. “Olivier’s doing great, she’s doing more than I could, a mass murderer and a war criminal and a fucking _coward_. She can keep it. I don’t want her seat. I want you. I love you.”

Ed hangs up.

He’s breathing hard, eyes wide. It takes him several long seconds to do more than stand there, and then he’s yanking his hair out of it’s clumsy bun, tugging at it just so the pain will distract him. He turns, his elbow banging against the side and sending a jolt of pain up his up. “Fuck!” he shouts, kicking the door open.

It cracks, smashing against the side, and there’s cracked broken glass around him and his elbow is throbbing, and really, just - just what the _fuck_ , why is Roy doing this to him? Why can’t they just continue on like they have for the past year, why does it need to change? Why is Roy trying so hard to give him more to lose?

He sighs, claps his hands together and presses them against phone, and the glass and twisted metal melts back together into the proper shape.

If only everything was that easy to fix.

~

Ed’s getting pastries at his favorite bakery when he finds out that he’s not starring in some dinky community theater ballet for his first weekend.

The banners down main street advertise Amestris’s premiere ballet company will be performing Giselle, with a special guest in the titular role.

“You didn’t know?” Al demands when Ed rushes home in a panic.

He glares, betrayed. “You did? You should have told me!”

“I … thought you knew?” Al says.

Fuck. This was bad enough when he thought he was just going to be performing in some little theater. That’s not the case. Why doesn’t he ever ask any questions before getting himself pulled into these situations? “How many tickets are being sold for opening weekend?”

Al opens his mouth, closes it, then says, “You don’t want me to answers that.”

_Fuck._

~

After the first week and a half of Ed dragging himself home, exhausted and sore, Winry obsessively checking his automail foot to make sure he’s not hurting himself, she decides to cut out the middleman. “I’m coming with you,” she declares, her case slung over her shoulder. “I can’t tell how your balance is or anything without seeing you dance.”

He looks up at her blearily, absently drinking the green sludge smoothie that Al puts in front of him. Five years without a body and you’d think he’d want to eat more than gross health food, but no, green sludge it is for all of them. “What?”

“I suppose I could make you dance here,” she says, “but you’re so tired when you get home that you’ll probably just mess it up.”

“Mess it up!” he repeats, offended, and she only stares at him, not sorry at all, until he sighs and says, “Yeah, sure, whatever, I don’t care.”

Roza looks over Winry when she walks in, but apparently decides she doesn’t care. “Fifth position,” she greets him.

“Can I put my bag down first?” he complains. “Put on my shoes, maybe?”

She sniffs, raising an eyebrow. He sighs and sees Winry muffling her laughter out of the corner of his eyes. Okay, whatever.

Winry’s silent through his warm up and the beginning of his routine, up until he starts to spin, and then she says, “Do that again.”

He does it again, and Roza turns to glare at Winry. Big mistake, Roza is scary, but Winry is scarier. “Do not interrupt!”

“Do you want him to be able to dance without breaking his leg?” she asks. “Then let me do this.” She goes over and says, “Go up on your flesh foot and extent your automail one behind you.” He does, shrugging at Roza, and Winry feels his automail foot through the pointe shoe, then drops to her knees to do the same to his flesh foot. “I think I should increase the sensitivity in your leg.”

“Oh, good, I love being in pain,” he complains. One of the positives on dancing on his automail leg was that it didn’t actually cause him any pain, not like it did on his flesh foot.

She pinches him in his side, and he has to come back down on the ball of his foot to keep from falling over and snapping his ankle. For someone who’s supposedly trying to help him, she’s a real pain. “Do you want to do this right, or not? Isn’t ballet all about little movements that have to be perfect? Then you’ll need the increased feeling. I’m going to have to take the leg off to do it though. Or I should. I suppose I could do it with it on, but it wouldn’t be very fun for you.”

“Great,” he says unenthusiastically.

Roza opens her mouth, closes it, then says, “You are an automail engineer.”

“The best,” she says, pushing herself back to her feet. “He’ll need a day to recover from reattaching the leg, but he’ll be better at responding to corrections after.”

“Just a day?” she asks, and Ed knows that she’s thinking of her granddaughter. Kia probably needs at least a week of bedrest after getting her leg reattached.

“It gets easier,” he says, “eventually. And I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Winry’s eyes narrow and then flicker over Roza. “You don’t have automail.”

It’s not a question. She can tell just by looking at her, by the way she stands or breathes or something. Ed doesn’t know, he’s never tried to figure it out, but it’s something only the really good automail mechanics can do. And Winry is more than really good, like she said - she’s the best.

“No,” Roza says, then looks towards Ed. “Did you make his?”

“Every plate and bolt and relay,” she says proudly.

Ed puts Roza out of her misery and says, “Her granddaughter has an automail leg. You might want to take a look at it.”

“I’d love to!” she says enthusiastically, eyes gleaming at the thought of getting to tinker. “Am I going to be horrified?”

“It’s good,” he says, because after ten years of having it himself and a lifetime growing up around Rockbells he can at least tell that.

She waves a hand dismissively. “Good is worthless. But as long as the port is solid, I can work with it.”

Ed grins at Roza, who’s face is carefully blank to keep from giving anything away. “Not even Rockbell automail can give Kia back what she lost. But, if she’s willing to work on it, she can dance almost like she did before.”

“No company will take a girl without a leg,” Roza says evenly. “She hates living under my shadow.” Apparently, Roza is a world renowned ballet mistress who also heads the most prestigious company in Amestris. Who knew? Certainly not Ed when he agreed to this. “She wanted - she was auditioning, when it happened, trying to be more than my granddaughter.”

Ed shrugs. “I can’t help with that. But, well, you’d think the military wouldn’t take on a child too.”

“Are you suggesting she become as good at ballet as you are at alchemy?” Winry demands. “That’s ridiculous.”

There’s a compliment somewhere underneath all the scolding. “She’s talented?”

“Yes,” Roza says with no hesitation.

“And she wants it?” he continues.

“More than anything.”

He smiles. “Well, then, I’ve never let what’s possible get in the way of what I want before. I don’t see why anyone else should either.”

~

Ed should probably find the ease with which Des grabs his around the hips and lifts him into the air to be insulting, but it’s his absolutely favorite thing to be so easily hoisted into the air.

Sometimes when things get really heated Roy will just grab him and move him how he wants him, and that should piss him off, but he actually really likes it. Not that he’ll ever say it aloud, because he’s not a giant girl.

“My automail weighs twice as much as flesh and bone,” Ed informs him, still being held aloft.

Des doesn’t even break a sweat. “Then you must be quite strong, to carry them as well as you do.”

“I could lift you,” he says, because he could, “but considering you’re nearly a foot taller than me, it might look a little silly.”

“Good form,” Roza says, “put him down, you are done for now. I need to work with the others, you take up too much of my time. We perform in one week, I can not be focusing so much on you.”

Edward’s mouth drops open. “ _I_ take up too much of _your_ time? Are you kidding me? You’re the one who’s taken over my life for three weeks, if anything you’re wasting my time–”

“Less talking, more leaving,” she says.

Unbelievable.

“Come on,” Des says warmly, wrapping his hand around Ed’s upper arm, “We can go get lunch.”

Right on cue, his stomach grumbles. Ed gives it the stink eye, then transfers that expression to Des. “You can’t just bribe me with food to get me to do what you want.”

Des raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, yeah, you can,” Ed concedes. He doesn’t bother to get changed, and he usually goes to the effort to cover the automail, but he can’t bring himself to care just now. It’s not like it’s a secret, everyone knows he has it, right?

He carefully takes off his shoes and unwraps his feet, wincing at the cuts and bruises before shoving them into a pair of flip flops.

This is what this ridiculous ballet and this crazy woman is doing to him. He’s going to go out there in cropped leggings and long sleeve crop top, right in front of everyone. It’s a really good thing he’s not too concerned with maintaining any sort respectable reputation.

“Here,” Des says, like he knows what he’s thinking. He’s holding out a red plaid shirt, which gives him flashbacks to Resembool, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“Thanks,” he says, tying it around his waist because if he tries to put it on he will overheat and die, but it at least makes him feel a little less naked. “You said something about lunch?”

Des rolls his eyes and holds the door open for him so they can escape the studio for a little bit. “I don’t know how you manage to get so good at so many things when you clearly have one true passion.”

“Eating?” he guesses, grinning. “I’m a decent cook too. I’m pretty sure half the reason Al and Winry don’t tell me to fuck off and get my own place is because they’d both die of malnutrition within the week.”

“I’m mostly living off protein shakes,” Des admits, leading them to the market instead of a restaurant, and Ed grins. Des knows what he’s doing, this is where the good shit is. If he overeats and comes back too full to do jumps properly then Roza will kill him, but all he wants to is eat about three dozen of those tasty little meat skewer things. “Lola isn’t much better than I am.”

He bargains with himself, saying he can have a meat skewer if he goes to that hippy cart at the other end with all the green smoothies. He cannot wait until this show is over and he can go back to eating whatever he wants. Not that he’s doing a great job of sticking to Roza’s diet, but he isn’t eating whatever he wants either, which sucks. “How’s she doing at the new job? She hasn’t stopped by rehearsal all week.”

Des sighs. “Busy. Which, I know I’m not to talk with the hours I keep, but-”

“You miss her,” Ed finishes, thinking of his own long hours.

He and Al work together, and Winry is in the same house, but other than that, well, seeing people and catching up with them can be difficult. It’s a good thing most of the military crew has gotten comfortable with just straight up harassing him into spending time with them, otherwise he’d probably never see any of them, or anyone else.

It’s possible he needs to get out more. Al may have had a point when he talked about this whole fiasco being a socializing thing for him, which he resents on several levels, but that doesn’t mean his brother is wrong.

And hey, just because he’s going be done with being Roza’s prop after this weekend doesn’t mean he has lose contact with everyone, right? Granted, Des is really the only on he’s more than surface friendly with. He thinks everyone else is still pissed about him taking the lead role, if only for a weekend. “When you both get a second, you should come to mine. I’ll make you some real food.”

Des blinks, and Ed wonders if he misread the situation and Des is only spending time with him because they’re the leads in this ballet, but then a smile breaks out across his face and he says warmly, “I’d like that.”

Ed grins back, tentatively pleased with himself. Lola’s a nurse, so if nothing else he’s sure she and Winry will have plenty to complain about together. Unless other medical professionals don’t shit talk their patients as much as Winry does.

“Edward?”

He turns, his smile becoming wider, more real. Speaking of not having time to see people. “Roy,” he greets, already half leaning in for a kiss. “Riza let you off your leash? You’re not usually allowed to leave your desk during the work day. Something about your track record of disappearing for hours at a time.” Granted, Roy was always doing actual work during those hours, but that didn’t get the paperwork done any faster.

His smile falters when he gets a good look at Roy and he freezes in place. Roy’s face is blank, or he’s sure it looks blank to most people, to people that don’t know him as well his Ed does. But even he’s confused, because Roy seems mad – no, furious, and he doesn’t know why. Is it – shit, is he still mad about the phone call and Ed hanging up on him? They’ve had way worse fights than that. But they usually see each other right after, to either fight or fuck or talk it out like the proper adults they’re pretending to be, so maybe it’s the distance that’s the problem, and that’s why he’s mad? But Ed told him he was busy, and would be busy for a couple of weeks, and it’s not like Roy hasn’t disappeared for days on end into his work before, so Ed’s not sure how much of a right he has to be upset anyway.

“Who’s this?” Roy asks, sharp and clipped.

Ed’s eyes widen. Shit shit shit, he does not want Roy hearing about this whole stupid ballet thing, he’ll never let him live it down. It’s bad enough that Al and Winry know, he doesn’t need to get flack from anyone else. He’s not certain if anyone else even knows he can dance. 

Des doesn’t bat an eye at Roy’s attitude, instead offering his hand with a friendly smile. “I’m Edward’s partner-” 

“Partner,” Roy interrupts flatly. 

“In Alchemy!” Ed says. He sees Des turn to look at him, and he takes a step to the side to step on Des’s toes. With his automail foot. “Des is my alchemy partner.” 

“Yes,” Des agrees, dragging out the word for far too long for it to be believable. Ed wishes there was some sort of subtle way to bury his face into his hands. Des is lucky ballet does require any actual talking, he’d be shit at it. What kind of actor can’t handle a little improv?

“I see,” Roy says. “Edward, can I speak to you for a moment?” 

“But,” he looks longingly towards the meat skewers. 

Des rolls his eyes. “I’ll grab your lunch, go talk to your friend.”

“Can you get me a-”

“Green smoothie from the Jessie’s cart? Yes. Although, they have way too much sugar in them, Roza would be pissed if she knew you were eating those.” 

“Better than what I actually want to eat,” he says reasonably, “also what Roza doesn’t know won’t hurt me.” 

Des gives him a look that’s really judgey for a man that keeps chocolate bars in his workout bag before heading over to the meat stall. Good man.

He turns back to Roy. “What did you want to - OW! Hey!”

Roy grabs his forearm and yanks him into the nearest store, which happens to be a clockmaker with an old woman with huge eyes sitting behind the counter. Roy’s really lucky that Ed feels guilty about the whole accidentally avoiding him thing, because he doesn’t usually tolerate this amount of manhandling. Well, in public anyway. 

“Official military business,” Roy tells her curtly, flashes his watch, and then shoves Ed into the storage closet.

Ed trips on the rug and bangs the back of his head on the wall. “Ow,” he says pointedly, even though it didn’t hurt that much. “What’s with you? If you think I’m going to have sex with you in this random storage closet with grandma out there where she can totally hear us, you’re out of your mind.”

“Have you not an ounce of shame?” he hisses, drawing himself up to his full height, which, sorry, but Ed’s not fifteen anymore, Roy has like two inches on him, at best. 

“You’re the one trying to get laid in public on a Wednesday afternoon. I feel like I should really be the one asking you that.” 

Roy’s eyes narrow. “You - how dare you - am I joke to you? Has this all been - some sort of game?” 

Ed settles, and he can’t really see Roy properly like this, in this dark storage closet with only the light of a weak, flickering lightbulb, but he looks - he looks _gutted_ , somehow, and Ed thinks that maybe he’s missing something. “I’m confused.” 

“You - you’re out here, with - is this the reason you didn’t want to go public? Because your partner would find about it?” 

Ed thinks it’s possible he’s never been more confused in his whole life. “Des knows about you? And look, I already said why I don’t think we should make a - a big fuss about us, okay, do we have to have this fight literally every time we talk? And it’s not like no one knows about us, our friends know, just not – the whole world.” 

“He knows,” Roy repeats. “And he doesn’t care?” 

Ed blinks. “Uh. Why - why would he?” 

“Are you seriously just jerking my around right now?” he demands. “Because that’s - that’s not fucking okay, you can’t just - you can’t do that.” 

Ed is silent for a moment as everything snaps into place, everything from the moment he saw Roy recontextualizing itself and taking on a different meaning. “Des and I aren’t dating!” 

“Okay, fucking then, that’s not any better,” Roy snaps. 

Ed should probably be the most concerned with clearing this up, but it’s really hard to think properly through the sudden cloud of anger. “You really think I’d step out on you? _Fuck you_. Like I’m the one walking through town with everyone with a pulse throwing themselves at me, if anyone on in this relationship is going to cheat, it’d be you, you huge fuckwad.” 

“Oh, as if anyone in this goddamned country would turn you down if you showed any interest,” Roy rolls his eyes. “And fine, Edward, if he’s not your - if you two aren’t - then who is he? Because he sure as hell isn’t your alchemy partner.” 

He freezes, mind scrambling to come up with an answer that doesn’t have anything to do with ballet.

Roy’s whole face shuts down, going cold and distant, and Ed hates what he does that. He can handle Roy’s anger just fine, he’s been doing it since he was twelve, but it’s his indifference that burns. “That’s what I thought.”

He shoves the door open, and Ed grabs his wrist. “Stop, just – stop. He’s not my boyfriend or lover or anything. That’s you, idiot.”

“Then who is he then?” he asks, turned away from him so Ed can’t see his face.

There’s no lie that Roy will buy, not now, but Ed still doesn’t want to tell him, honestly doesn’t know if Roy would believe the truth even if he did tell him. “Why does it matter? I’m not cheating on you. As if I ever would ever cheat on you, come on. Des is a friend, that’s it.”

“Sure,” he says dully, and Ed’s getting mad at him. Why doesn’t Roy believe him? He wouldn’t lie, not about this, how could Roy not believe him? “Let me go, Edward.”

He looks down, and realizes he’s still holding on to Roy’s wrist with his automail hand, and he lets go. Shit, that’s definitely going to bruise, he should have said something earlier, he’s lucky Ed didn’t break anything.

Roy breathes in, straightens his shoulders, and pushes the door open. “Hey, wait, we’re not done here!” he says, going out after him.

“I’m done,” he says, and Ed flinches, because that’s his General voice, his Flame Alchemist voice. Roy hasn’t used that on him in – fuck, maybe ever, actually. “Goodbye, Edward.”

Ed means to call out after him, to go after him and maybe beat some sense into that thick skull of his, but his legs won’t move and his throat is too tight, and he just watches the door swing shut behind him.

What the fuck just happened?

“Did he … want me to fix his watch?” the store owner asks, big eyes blinking in confusion.

Ed forces a smile and says, “No, no, it’s uh – nothing you can fix.”

He heads back to Des in daze, not sure how – he’s so confused, how did they get there so quickly, and why hadn’t Roy believed him? It’s one thing for Roy to think he’s cheating, it’s another for him to think Ed is lying to him about cheating. Who the fuck would Ed even cheat on him with anyway, no one else combined quite the same level of gorgeous and infuriating. Well, Winry and Ling both fall pretty close, but they’re both way more infuriating than they are beautiful, which is saying something, since they’re both super attractive.

Des takes one look at him and says, “What’s wrong?”

“I … think I just got dumped,” he says, and just saying it makes his heart seize painfully in his chest and tears well in his eyes. It’s mostly just misunderstanding, but Roy hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t believed him, and it’s not as bad as the terrible things that Ed has been imagining to get into the part of Giselle, but it still hurts.

This right here is the real reason he hadn’t wanted to make his relationship with Roy public.

He’d known it was only a matter of time before Roy got tired off him, before Roy moved on like he always did with everyone else he dated, and Ed – Ed hadn’t wanted to get too attached. He’d worked long hours and made excuses to see Roy less than he wanted, less than Roy wanted, because – because he didn’t want to seem desperate, didn’t want to just be another young, pretty thing clinging to Roy’s arm and eventually being tossed aside. He didn’t want to be open and public about it because he couldn’t handle the humiliation on top of it, of knowing he was just another one of Roy’s passing interests.

He couldn’t tell Roy that he loved him back, because he was so afraid that Roy had said those words dozens of times before, that he didn’t mean them the same way that Ed meant them.

He’d thought it would make it hurt less, if he wasn’t clingy, if people wouldn’t pity him. But now that it’s here, well – Ed doesn’t know how it could possibly hurt more than it already does.

“Something is different about you,” Roza says when they come back, Des hovering over him anxiously, so clearly wanting to help but unsure of what to do.

“I got dumped,” he says, so sure that if he keeps repeating it will start to hurt less. So far, it’s not working.

Roza grabs his chin and looks into his face, satisfaction in her eyes. “You are heartbroken. Good. Use it. You will dance better now.”

“Madame!” Des protests, horrified.

Ed’s eyebrows shoot to his forehead. “You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

“Ed,” Des groans.

Roza smiles and pats his cheek. “Yes. I am a bitch, and you, my dear, are Giselle.”

The worst part, the thing that really irritates him, is that’s she right.

He does dance better now, he doesn’t have to pretend to have his heart crushed, because that’s what it feels like, right now, no imagination necessary. Roza, at least, is delighted.

~

Ed doesn’t plan to say anything to his brother or Winry, not because he’s in the practice of keeping secrets from them, or because he thinks his new single status is something he can keep a secret from them, it’s just – it’s just something he doesn’t want to deal with right now, right this second.

It doesn’t go that way.

Ed’s barely stepped through the door when Al’s rounding the corner. Winry a half step behind him. They don’t make it very far, freezing as soon as they see him, which is an odd reaction considering he assumes they came to the door expecting to find him.

“What did he do?” Winry asks.

She’s tapping her wrench against her hand in a way that has Ed wondering if he could just take a couple steps back and make a break for it. “How do you even know?”

“Breda called.” Well, shit. “He wanted to know what the hell was going on. Roy apparently fucked off after lunch and hasn’t been back to the office.”

“I’m not his keeper,” Ed snaps, and if he ever was, well, he’s certainly not anymore. 

Al’s eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth, closes it, then asks, “Brother, did - did you do something?” 

“No!” he shouts, and some of the anger bubbles up from the hurt. “No, I fucking didn’t, and fuck him for not believing me. Like I’d lie to him about that? Like I’d do it, period? Just - just fuck him.” 

Al and Winry blink. “Can you start from the beginning maybe?”

He shakes his head. “No. It doesn’t matter. It’s over, so, whatever. I’m going to bed.” 

“At least eat something,” Al says, putting a hand on Winry’s arm when she opens her mouth. She shuts it again reluctantly, something rebellious about the dip of her eyebrows. 

“I’m not hungry,” he says, and he should really shower, he’ll hate himself if he doesn’t, but all he wants is to fall into bed, into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness, where he doesn’t have to deal with any of this. 

Al says, “Brother,” but Ed doesn’t hang around for the rest of it, because if Al pushes then he’ll relent, like he always does, and he just can’t - deal with that, right now. 

They don’t try to stop him or go after him, but the next morning he finds a jar of overnight oats with strawberry yogurt mixed in with blueberries on top waiting for him in the fridge, and he’s still not hungry, heartache filling up all the space inside of him, but he eats it anyway. 

~

The next couple of days pass quickly, because he just refuses to stop. Roza, at least, is satisfied. He dances until his body threatens to give out on him, then goes home, and if he can’t quiet his thoughts enough to fall asleep he’ll go to Al who’s been thankfully willing to drop whatever other project he’s working on to do theoretical alchemy with him until his eyelids start to droop and he ends up passed out on top of their papers, bent over his desk. 

He always wakes up back in his own bed. He loves his brother. 

Before he knows it, he’s eating breakfast before heading to the studio for the first night of his performance. He’s a little bit worried what he’ll do to occupy himself once this weekend is over. “Don’t come,” he orders, shoveling his eggs into his mouth. 

“We’ll be there, Roza already gave us tickets,” Al assures, and Ed groans. 

“Are you joking? I told everyone about it,” Winry says. 

Ed is going to kill her. Then himself. 

“She means other automail mechanics, not people we know,” Al clarifies. 

Winry nods enthusiastically. “Look at it this way, there’ll be less people who actually care about ballet, and a bunch of automail mechanics to come see my handiwork.” 

“That’s worse,” he says, because he is. It’s one thing for him to fuck up because he’s a fuck up, but now he’s gotta worry about doing everything perfectly so they can all see that Winry’s automail is perfect. He can’t mess up, because then they might think it’s the fault of the automail, and not Ed, who isn’t a professional ballerina and is just being shoehorned into this role for a weekend because the head of the company wants to make a point to her granddaughter. “What have I ever done to you.” 

“I keep a list,” she says, and he’s not sure if she’s joking or not. “Come on, Ed, of course I have to show you off. Do you know how many mechanics can make automail that people can dance with? It’s just me.” 

Al coughs. 

“Okay, maybe a couple others,” she concedes, “but mine’s the best, and now everyone can see that.” 

“Sure, but if I fuck up you’re not allowed to freak out at me for making you look bad,” he says. 

Winry rolls her eyes. “You won’t fuck up. You don’t, when it really matters.” 

Past experience has taught him that when it really matters is when he fucks up the most, but he’s not interested in arguing the point with her, so he takes another bite of his breakfast. 

Al nudges him with his knee, like he knows what Ed is thinking, and smiles at him, a sunny, full grin that Ed can’t help but return. 

Of course, he returns it with a mouthful of egg, which just leads to Winry loudly complaining about how disgusting he is, which makes him laugh, so now the egg’s all over the kitchen table and Winry’s just screaming louder. 

An excellent start to the day, all things considered. 

~

Ed doesn’t know how to do his hair perfectly like everyone else, or how to put makeup on at all, and he doesn’t have anyone to ask, it’s not like Winry wears any, so Roza does it for him, expertly twisting his hair into a perfectly round bun in the base of his skull and securing a small spray of red silk flowers into the center.

“I thought I was supposed to wear blue?” he mutters, trying not to move too much as she carefully presses powder onto his face.

“It does not matter,” she says, outlining his eyes before reaching for the lipstick. “And if it did matter, it still would not matter. You are not a traditional Giselle. Why should you the rest of it be traditional?”

When the costumer comes in, beaming with pride and holding a wardrobe bag in her hands, Ed sees what she means.

This is not the normal Giselle costume, no criss crossing around the waist of puffy sleeves. It doesn’t even have any white. Instead it has draping off shoulder sleeves in thin gauze and then a dark red, structured, corset like bodice, probably to give him the illusion of curves he doesn’t have. Then the skirt is several layers of chiffon, and he really wished he’d practiced in something similar, because that will definitely mess him up, but he can’t bring himself to be too mad, because it’s gorgeous. The top of the skirt is the same color as the bodice, but then it shifts, bleeding into orange, and then a pale yellow, like a sunset. 

Ed’s never felt the urge to wear a skirt before, and hadn’t been looking forward to it, even as a costume, but he should maybe readjust his stance on that. He brushes his flesh fingers across the bodice, smiling at the way the soft velvet feels across his skin. It’s beautiful, but more than that, it’s - nice. It’s high quality and lovingly made, and Ed has money, and a strange relationship with it, because he’s pretty much always had money. Hohenheim had left them with more than enough - well, more than enough if he’d only been gone the couple of years he’d originally planned on. Then he became a state alchemist at twelve, where the salary was more than generous, and Ed had lived in the military dorms and expensed pretty much everything else, so he always had more money than he knew what to do with, and now he’s a contractor, and he makes even more money than when he was a major, and - he has money. He has more money than he knows what to with it, so he does - nothing. He still makes most of his own clothes with alchemy, and he’s never broken the habits he gained from being constantly on the move, so he just - doesn’t have that much stuff. 

The library in their house is easily where most of his money goes, rare alchemical books and reference manuals, and it’s not even like they struggle to make the payments on their house. Winry makes more money than both of them, and could buy their place on her own, easily. 

He spends a lot of money on food, good food, nice restaurants where he never dresses nice enough, but even then - those were usually dates, Roy taking him out under the guise of it being business matter and complaining about him being a bottomless pit when his eyes smiled at him, and - 

\- and the point is, he doesn’t have many really nice things, things that are beautiful and good and feel good, and this dress seems like it’s one of those things. 

He wonders if Roza will let him keep it. He’ll pay for it. 

“You like it?” The costumer asks, grinning like she knows the answer. 

“Yes,” he says, and now they’re both smiling at him. 

They help him into it, and it feels just as good as it looks. He looks at himself in the mirror, the dress and makeup, his broken in red pointe shoes, his automail leg and arm gleaming. Roza had cut off one of the legs of the tights so his automail would be on clear display. 

She squeezes his shoulder and kisses the air next to cheek. “Go, Giselle. Your Albrecht is waiting for you.” 

~

The only saving grace is he can’t see the audience. 

They’re nothing but a blanket of darkness as the light beats down heavy and hot on his face. Des is there, looking exceedingly handsome in his ice blue costume, the winter to his summer, which is all the more ironic to Ed since this play is taking place in autumn. 

He affects a wide eye naivete that he’s never had in his real life as Des conceals his identity to woo him, as Albrecht hides his true status as a noble to woo Giselle. And they dance together, Des strong and sure and absolutely perfect as Albrecht in every way. Ed is here as a symbol, but Des is here because he’s simply the best at what he does, because he’s strong and controlled and handsome with an expressive face that conveys all the emotions and they can’t articulate with dialogue. 

Des grabs him around the waist to life him into the air, and he keeps is body straight and controlled, his arms out and hyper aware of the placement of his fingers and toes as Des lowers him back to the ground. Ed focuses on making his decent back to earth look graceful, which has more to do with Des than it does him. He has to touch down with his automail leg first, and the only way to make that look good is if Des continues subtly lifting him past the point he should, until Ed can steady his weight with his flesh foot to let the automail one land softer. 

They cycle through the rest of the first act, their love, and another villager’s meddling to reveal Albrecht’s deception to Giselle. 

This part is harder to act, probably because it doesn’t feel like an act.

He’s heartbroken and betrayed, the one he loved is forever out of his grasp, and he dances faster and faster, appearing more erratic to the audience but every movement is tightly controlled. 

How can Giselle live with this deception? This loss? 

There are versions of the ballet where she simply dances until her heart gives out and she dies. 

Roza calls them cowardly.

Ed twirls past Des, grabbing the fake dagger from his hand and coming to a pause center stage, in front of everyone, raises the dagger, and mimes plunging it into his heart. 

Without trust, there is no love, and without love, there is no life. 

Giselle collapses to the ground, a graceful, purposeful fall, and is dead by the time her head rolls onto the floor. 

Albrecht affects a pose of anguish, while everyone is shocked, and circles Giselle’s body. 

Then act one comes to a close, and the lights dim before the curtain falls.

Ed hastily presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, stemming the flow of tears he can feel threatening to spill. Roza will kill him if he messes up his makeup in between acts.

“You did great!” Des says, offering him a hand to pull him the rest of the way to his feet. His smile falters “Ed, what’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” he says, forcing a smile. “Thanks, but you were the one who was actually amazing. You’re - you’re really good at this, excellent career choice.” 

Des still looks concerned, but doesn’t press it, and then they’re all being ushered off the stage. He takes the few minutes he has to stretch and rub at the muscles around his port, which haven’t exactly been thrilled with his recent exercise routine. Winry’s already given him a dozen lectures on taking it easy after this weekend, so his body has time to recover from something it’s frankly not properly trained to do.

It seems like he’s barely sat down when it’s time to get to his feet again. The second act is his favorite.

The vengeful spirits of scorned lovers add Giselle to their ranks, and Albrecht collapses at her feet to beg her forgiveness, Des staring at him with dark eyes full of pain, and Giselle forgives him for his deception.

She loves him so much she can’t help but forgive him, because even in death the pain of hurting him is too much to bear. The vengeful spirits find him, and force him to dance, trying to kill him through exhaustion. Des moves quick and light, like gravity is something that happens to other people, and there’s a part of Ed that resents being forced to be part of the spectacle, because all he really wants to do is sit back and watch Des and all the others, who he’s sure make a better picture doing this than he does, when they’re experts and he’s just an abnormally skilled amateur.

Ed pleads for his lover’s life, but the spirits are unmoved, trying to kill Des in front of him. Yet, in the end, Giselle proves victorious, the power of her love breaking both her and Albrecht free from the chains that bind them, and as the sun rises, the spirits melt away, and yet Giselle and Albrecht remain.

They circle each other, so close, but not touching, because no matter their love, Giselle is still dead.

It doesn’t matter that she’s forgiven him, that her love matters more than an unintentional betrayal, because it can’t bring her back to life, can’t bring them back together.

So Ed steps back from the stage, and the lights dim, except for the spotlight on Des. He’s forced to be forever, tragically alone, and this ending of true love is bittersweet.

The spot light goes off, the audience starts cheering and clapping, and then the lights go back on. Des grins and holds out his hand, which Ed steps forward to take, smiling at the enthusiastic audience, but Des ends up having to tug on his arm to get him to bend into a bow.

Sitting in the middle of the front row is Kia, tears streaming down her face as she claps, looking truly hopeful for the first time since Ed’s met her, which had been the point of all this to begin with, so of course that’s not surprising.

Al’s next to her, because of course he is, beaming, and then there’s Winry in the middle of the audience, sitting in the midst of a couple dozen automail mechanics, who are pulled between clapping for the play and patting her on the back, looking as awed at what her automail can do as they should be, which is good, because he’d been so worried about making her look bad, at making her look less than they very best at what she does.

But what stops him, what made him freeze, is something else.

Roy is there, in the front row which Ed knows has been sold out for weeks. He’s not clapping, he’s not even moving, just looking at the stage with his gorgeous dark eyes, his face slack and soft, something unbearably warm in the corner of his lips and the crinkle of his eyes.

Ed isn’t dead, and neither is Roy. They’re both right here, and his worst nightmare has already happened, Roy broke up with him, and – and it feels like Ed really did plunge a dagger into his chest, so what does he have to lose really? Nothing he hasn’t already lost, anyway.

Des is trying to pull him back so the rest of the cast can step forward to take their bows, but Ed shakes him off and leaps off the stage, landing on his automail foot first so it can absorb more of the impact. Des is laughing, and he’s certain that Roza is going to kill him for this, but he just doesn’t care.

He stops in front of Roy, aware of everyone’s eyes on them, and he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He’s so full of feelings, of hope and despair and a jagged sort of love, but he can’t make any words come out.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says, stepping close and reaching out for him, but stopping before he touches him. “Ed, I’m so sorry, he’s – he’s your dance partner, that’s what he meant, and I should have believed you.”

Ed waits a beat, but there’s no accusations, Roy doesn’t say that Ed should have just explained himself, doesn’t get upset with Ed for keeping his secrets, because secrets have never been a problem between them, never been an issue. It’s always been about trust, and Ed – Ed needs to trust that if Roy’s decided he wants him, he means it, and he’s not just going to change his mind and leave him at the first opportunity.

“I love you,” he says, heart beating in his hears and the blood rushing through his veins, “and I don’t care who knows. I’m sorry too. When you told me you loved me, I should have believed you.”

Roy’s whole face slackens, and then it’s like watching the sun rise, the pure joy and happiness on his face, and Ed’s never seen him look like that before, and he did that. He rises up en pointe so they’re the same height and then pulls him close, kissing him in front of everyone, because he can’t not kiss him, right then, with him looking so happy and being so close.

“Fuck yeah!” Al shouts, and then they have to stop kissing so Ed can lean his head against Roy’s shoulder and contemplate the best way to kill his brother, but Roy’s hands are still warm and firm on his hips, so he supposes it’s all still a net positive.

Giselle didn’t get her happy ending, but Ed’s been through too much and overcome too much not to get his, not what it’s so close, not when it’s literally in his arms.

“You know the rest of the office is going to be here tomorrow, right?” Roy asks, voice low and right in his ear.

Ed groans and kisses him again so he won’t say any more horrifying things.

He should probably be upset with Al and Winry for snitching, but when this is the end result – he supposes he can overlook it, just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it! 
> 
> feel free to follow / harass me at: shanastoryteller.tumblr.com
> 
> (and of course don't forget to check out [citrusvoid](https://citrusvoid.tumblr.com)


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